Sex and the Single Soccer Mom

Xanax

 The lesson I’ve learned this morning: One Xanax is not quite enough to quell an anxiety attack. However, two Xanax turn me into a zombie. It’s a hard call to make; Do I go to work with a full-blown anxiety attack? Or do I go to work heavily medicated? Fortunately, the anxiety attacks are reducing, so perhaps it will be a non-issue. For now, I’m simply hoping my coworkers don’t noticed my extremely dilated pupils and my tendency to wander into doorframes while attempting to walk.

Closure

 After much deliberation, I decided to write my ex-lover a “closure” email and send him the content of my last blog. As it wasn’t a vindictive or bitter blog, I simply wanted him to acknowledge to himself the deep impact his behavior had on my life. I told him the email was for MY closure and he only needed to read it and ackowledge my words and feelings to HIMSELF. I wished him well and success in finding what he wanted for his life. Two days later I get a very long text in the middle of my work day, letting me know he received the email and is pondering it. He extols the many wonderful qualities he knows I possess and writes my email confirms it all for him, as well as respecting my courage in sending it. He feels I deserved a response, yet needs time to find the words and how to phrase them. He states he will think of me, as he has often in the past two weeks, and respond to me soon.

The text sent me to the bathroom in a torrent of tears. I splashed cold water on my face repeatedly, to try to appear less obvious. Then I mourned the end of the relationship all over again, because CLEARLY, he is an ethical and deeply thinking human being. As I am sinking into the mire of depression all over again at losing such a wonderful human being, another thought occurs to me…

He just managed to unclose my closure! Does he not understand the meaning of the word “closure”? It means something is CLOSED. My closure was to empower me and let go. How dare he take away my closure by stating he is going to respond? Now I’m refreshing my email every 10 minutes and cursing myself for a fool. I even have the random “What if he realizes he made a terrible mistake while he’s pondering my words?” I felt sadness, yet a great deal of empowerment and relief at sending my carefully worded closure email. With his response, I am now back to feeling anxious and unsettled, on top of the grief. Thus the Xanax zombification while at work…

Ridiculous Musings

I occasionally (okay, often!) get these ridiculously idealistic ideas. You know….”Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could make my own rules about how I feel about this situation?” It has led me to open relationships (which was really a rationalization to not lose someone who didn’t want commitment), inviting my ex-husband to my families holiday gatherings (I totally went home in a funk and psychoanalyzing every detail of what went wrong in our marriage), entering into a long-distance relationship (Horrible, horrible way of clinging to a man who put his career before his “love” for me), and agreeing to meet with my ex-husband’s current girlfriend for a drink so we can get to know each other (Come on! I don’t want to get to know her! I want her to grow warts. I want her to develop scurvy. I DO NOT want to be her new friend!).

My latest ridiculously, idealistic musing is this: Wouldn’t it be lovely if I were to call up my ex-lover and ask if we could have one last evening together? Something beautiful to celebrate our time together? Something to leave us both with a more lovely memory than him walking in my door and breaking my heart and me sitting there weeping? We could go somewhere fantastic for dinner (we both love great food), go back to my place for some wine and snuggling, then finish the evening with incredible love-making and holding each other until morning? At which point we would kiss goodbye and that would be the finality of our relationship. It sounds beautiful and lovely and EXACTLY the sort of memory I’d want to have of a relationship that meant so much… My finger was on the phone, ready to dial his number (which I still haven’t deleted) and propose this beautiful and wonderful idea.

Then it occurred to me: Oh wait…This is a testament to your unreasonable, idealistic form of rationalization when you want something. This man just broke your heart with no warning, after you believed everything was great. You actually thought there was a good chance you’d be planning a wedding next year! How are you going to spend an entire evening with him,  make love with him, sleep in his arms all night, yet not want to slit your wrists the next day? (Meant more symbolically than literally: I am not suicidal). It might make it a more beautiful memory for HIM, but I would still know the truth, wouldn’t I? I’d still know that for whatever reason, at the end of the evening he was leaving me. Grief and longing can make for some powerful rationalizations of behavior.

So, I gave up my ridiculous musings about “one last night”. I’m trying my damndest to stop refreshing my email every few minutes to see if he’s replied to my closure email (You don’t reply to closure emails, dammit!). I’ll know next time I have a serious anxiety attack to keep the Xanax usage to one tablet, along with a calming herbal tea.

Perhaps, in the midst of this grief, I am at the very least learning to be truthful with myself.

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” ~ Anais Nin

This entry was posted on December 12, 2011 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Dating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.